Towards the Shape of Responsible Research Metrics: A Hybrid Citation-Mapping Approach to Scientific and Policy Uptake

Research metrics have become deeply embedded in science, despite sustained criticism of their limitations and unintended effects, especially in research assessment. Key reform documents such as the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, the Leiden Manifesto, and The Metric Tide established core principles for the responsible use of metrics and shaped broader debates on responsible research assessment. This research-inprogress paper maps the scientific and policy uptake of these foundational documents through a hybrid citationmapping approach, combining bibliographic data from Web of Science, Scopus, and OpenAlex with policy citation data from Overton. At this stage, the analysis focuses on the scientific corpus, examining its temporal development, geographical distribution, and citation-overlap patterns. Preliminary findings highlight the prominent position of the Leiden Manifesto, limited overlap among the three foundational documents, and broad international diffusion centred in Europe and North America, with Asia playing an increasingly important role.